Dream House (20 page)

“The garden's amazing, Annie!” she said. “Do you plan it all out before you plant?”

“Oh, heavens, no. I start with the seeds of my favorites and have a loose idea of what I want. Then I see what happens. What grows, what dies—much depends on the weather, of course, and the soil, and how busy I get with other things—and it sort of evolves, and I surrender to it as I tend it. Is designing buildings sort of like that?”

Gina thought about this. “Hmm. Well, I wish it could be more like that. There are so many parameters to pay attention to—program, cost, building codes, neighborhood restrictions, engineering . . . designs evolve when I'm meeting with clients. But, really, we try to plan every little detail before a single nail gets hammered—it's all about control.” She laughed.

“Playing my violin for the symphony's a little like that. A hundred years of watching the little black notes on the page, getting them just right so the music will sound the way the composer intended it to. If my mind wanders for a second, I'll make a mistake. But what I love about gardening are the possibilities . . ..” She smiled as she surveyed her garden. “Gorgeous things happen whether I intend them to or not.”

Gina heard the wisdom in Annie's words and hoped she would discover such creative balance in her own life.

A hummingbird buzzed by Gina, then hovered with its beak in a gladiolus. “Annie, there's a bird trapped in the house.”

Annie turned. “Where?”

“At Mom and Dad's, I mean. I heard it fluttering around in the attic, but the ladder's gone, so I couldn't go up.”

“Oh, gosh, poor thing. You can take our ladder over, if you want.” Annie held her glass while Gina filled it. “Thanks, hon. The Historical Society replaced this fence, and I've been trying to get the old vine back onto it.”

“Why don't I hammer the nails in and get the ties around them while you hold the vines?”

Gina took off her sneakers to let her feet bathe next to Annie's in the cool grass. Annie had on red flip-flops and a Band Aid wrapped her baby toe. Holding the ties between her teeth, Gina reached over a clump of tiger lilies to set the first nail. The scent of damp garden earth and her own sweat mingled; with every nail she hammered, she could feel the tension in her body loosen. The two women worked silently and methodically, swatting mosquitoes with a violence well accepted in these parts, hitching up the vine until most of the fence was covered.

When they got to the corner of the yard Annie stared into the bed of petunias. “I miss your mother and father terribly, you know,” she said.

Surprised by Annie's sudden dolefulness, Gina couldn't think of what to say. “You guys spent a lot of years together,” she said finally.

“Not just years; we spent a lot of . . . energy together, and I don't mean only in the boats and on the beach with you kids and whatnot. I mean, kids grow up fast. They're with you, what, eighteen years or less? And after that, we parents are still together twenty and thirty years later, grilling hamburger from Tobey's Market or breaking the law by chucking the smelly remains of our lobster feasts into the dumpster at the town dock.”

Gina laughed. Annie kneeled to deadhead a petunia. “Lord, how your ma and pa missed you.”

A lump rose in Gina's throat; the firm grip of guilt turned the peaceful garden into a trap. She took a breath and stepped back from the flowerbed, all at once feeling her children gone. “It must be a terrible shock when your kids leave home.”

Holding the last bit of vine, Annie swiveled and looked at Gina, as if she'd heard the full depth of her fear. “Ayup—it's a toughie,” she said, before turning back to the fence. “But you know, it depends on
how
they leave home. If you play your cards right, they come on back and even paint your fences once in a while.”

Gina smiled and pounded in the last nail.

Stretched out on the bed that night, Gina closed her eyes and thought about her guardedness with Annie. She'd missed perhaps the only opportunity she'd have to communicate something deeper about her parents. She wondered:
Would
her mother have shared with Annie the kind of intimate things Gina talked about with her closest friends?

She picked up her phone, now nearly desperate to talk to Esther and Ben, hoping to soothe the small injuries of her day. Ben answered, excited to tell her about the giant bubble maker they'd bought at Toys “R” Us. “It was too windy in the yard, so Dad let us do them in the garage so there's, like, soap slime all over the floor! Esther's mad at you, or something.”

Gina asked Ben to put Esther on. While she waited, she could hear the hammering scales of
The Rugrats
theme song.

“You
have
to!” she heard Ben yell.

More waiting. Finally, Esther picked up. “Hi,” she said weakly. When Gina asked, “What's new?” she said, “Nothing, except Nicky's parents are getting divorced. By the way, I Googled food poisoning, and it doesn't sound anything like how you acted at school that day.”

“Oh, Estie . . . I'm sorry about Nicky. And you're right; it wasn't food poisoning, but I'm just fine, and we'll talk all about it when I see you.”

Esther was silent for a few moments. “What're you
doing,
anyway?” she finally said. “Can't you just come
home
?” She began to sob.

“Esther? Sweetie, what's the matter?”

Esther struggled to speak. Gina had nearly given up on her when she said, “Other kids see their grandparents on Christmas, not just
in the summer! We never spent a single Christmas with Gran and Granddad. It's not fair! Why did we always stay so short in Maine?”

The question left Gina dumbstruck. There was a clattering sound on the phone, as if Esther had dropped the receiver.

“Esther?” Gina waited, close to tears, her stomach twisted in a knot.

Paul picked up the phone. “Hey! How come you didn't call last night?”

“I'm sorry. I was out of it. Boy, Esther's really having a hard time.”

“She's tired. And I think she's missing you.”

Gina stiffened. “Missing me? I've only been gone two days.”

“Yes, but remember, other than when you were east to clean out the house, you've never been away from them for two days in their lives.”

The remark pushed all of Gina's buttons. “What are you saying—that I should feel bad about leaving them and bad about
not
leaving them, too?”

Paul was silent. Finally he said, “Gina, I'm not trying to make you feel bad. It's
normal
for Esther to be missing you.”

There was that word
normal
again, the surest way to make her feel abnormal. “But she's . . . It's more than that.”

“Well, what do
you
think is bothering her?”

“I messed up,” Gina said. “We should've spent more time with Mom and Dad. She adored them, and I deprived her.”

Gina waited for Paul to refute her claim. But he said, “Don't beat yourself up. If you really want to know, Esther said yesterday that she was afraid you were dying.” He laughed.

“
What?
” Gina whispered, afraid Annie and Lester might overhear. “Why are you laughing?”

“Lighten up, Gina. You know Esther; she's a catastrophizer. She'll be fine. How are you doing?”

“Did you at least reassure her that I'm okay?”

“
Are
you?”

“We're talking about Esther.”

“Of course I reassured her. I told her you were on a retreat with the Dalai Lama.” Again, he laughed.

Gina fought to contain her vexation. “She needs some attention. Can you just go and make—”

“She was fine before you called, Gina. You know Esther's worrying about what's going on with you—she's trying to understand.” Paul spoke calmly, slowly. “She's confused. You melt down at school. You go away alone. Then you don't call. How can I reassure her when I don't know what's going on?”

Paul's list of offenses roiled her. “Paul, I'm . . . I
never
go away. This is very hard for me. I leave for four days—four stupid days! And things there are falling apart. Can you just take care of it, of her?”

Dead silence. Gina looked at her phone; the battery had died. Would Paul think she'd hung up on him? She couldn't remember ever having spoken to him so harshly. Next, she would lose all equilibrium and blame her husband for it, like her mother!

Annie and Lester's bedroom door bumped shut. Alarmed and clammy, Gina went into the bathroom, with a cool soak in mind. She turned on the tub faucet and slumped against the cold, frictionless enamel in just a few inches of water. Closing her eyes, she felt almost human again, but when she opened them, she wasn't prepared for the confrontation with her middle-aged toes, her middle-aged knees and breasts. What did they mean to her anymore? Tonight, they seemed almost to be parts of someone else's body.

She was just stepping out of the tub when again, on the other side of the wall, she heard Annie and Lester thumping around.

Lester's voice: “Why don't you take it off—it's too hot.”

Annie: “You're right.”

Gina stood dripping on the bath mat, surprised to notice she was holding her breath.

Annie sighed, then Lester. Gina stayed still, listening, evaporating. The bed creaked, and Annie laughed softly. The bed talked more, with rhythm now. A groan, a long silence, another sigh. The low tones of words spoken with affection. Quiet.

A kind of shock took hold of Gina, and she broke out in a new layer of sweat. Looking in the mirror, she stifled a sob rising in her throat. It had been months since she and Paul had made love.

In bed, she churned. Of course, she should've called Paul back on the landline. She should've
tried
to explain to Esther what had happened at school, and she would, soon.

But how would she explain why they'd only gone to Maine once a year? She remembered Esther's last few summers with her grandparents, when she'd spent much of her time combing the blackberry bushes in the field and picking flowers from the garden. “Pick as many as you want, dear; they'll grow right back,” Eleanor had told her. Grandmother and granddaughter, exactly the same height that summer, had spent part of every day arranging and tending small bouquets in Eleanor's collection of vases—just one of the many things Gina wished she herself had more time to do with Esther. With bittersweet curiosity, Gina observed her daughter's pure and unfettered enjoyment of her mother, who was careful not to reveal her most troubling side to her grandchildren, only occasionally letting slip a note of bitterness. On what would be the last day they saw Gina's parents alive, as they were leaving down the driveway, Esther had dissolved in tears, as if she knew. Gina had only been able to turn in her seat, reach out, and squeeze Esther's hand.

Gina turned off the light. In the dark, there'd be no chance of escaping her thoughts, of being distracted by the details of the room: the exuberant zinnias, the cheerful flowered sheets, not even the mosquito waiting, bloodthirsty, on the wall.

As she often did when she couldn't sleep, she lured her mind from troublesome territory by returning to the unrealized Marin house, sifting through a kit of parts: morphing volumes, one story and two story, linear and compact; casement windows and sash windows; pitched, arched, and shed roofs; stucco, metal, clapboard, board-and-batten. Piecing together limitless combinations of features, she manipulated her house like a Mr. Potato Head, hoping that eventually the perfect one would reveal itself. Perhaps it was the haphazard sloppiness of the process that sometimes allowed sleep to sneak in and steal her away. But even when sleep did not come, the house she'd hoped to find through her meditation continued to elude her.

Deeper, dreamless sleep darted just ahead of her, leading her through the forest of gnarled anxieties that was insomnia. On her kitchen island, Allison Brink delivered a baby while her children looked on. “Speak to me in English!” she commanded. “Practice the piano while I finish up here.” A second later, Allison's kitchen became Gina's parents', filled with dust and plaster. The outside wall of the kitchen had fallen completely away; swallows took turns around the room. “Oh, how gorgeous!” her mother said, putting dinner on the table. “We could leave it open like this and just tell Hickle it fell off.” The wall popped up again. Her mother stormed out. A door slammed shut; Gina heard Esther crying but she couldn't turn the knob that would take her to her.

A house is a machine for living in.

Le Corbusier,
Towards a New Architecture